Legislative Advocacy

From the NESBG President

Although small businesses and sole proprietors account for a
significant part of the business community, their voice in the
legislative process is not in proportion to the numbers they represent.
There are many reasons for this including the inability to get such a
diverse population unified.

In some instances, there are trade associations representing
primarily businesses with employees and those organizations tend to look
after the needs of that particular trade. N.E.S.B.G. recognizes that
there are numerous laws, rules and regulations that affect small
businesses and sole proprietors regardless of their trade or occupation.
While these "common issues" will remain the central focus of the
organization's efforts, it is the hope that as we continue to grow that
we may utilize the strength of the total membership to aid members and
member associations where possible.

We always welcome the input of members and potential members as to
their opinion and views on the issues facing small business and more
broadly the society we live in. We are non partisan and pleased to
recognize legislators and/or candidates from any party who will work to
help strengthen small business and support sole proprietors.

COMMENT ON NEW YORK STATE BUDGETThe 2014 - 2015 New York State Budget

NESBG applauds Governor Cuomo for attempting to make
schools accountable and as he put it everyone has lobbyists except the
students so he was going to lobby for the students. It is long overdue.
We also applaud his trying to get the pension situation under control. We also applaud his effort to bring business to New York via the No Taxes For Ten Years Program.

We wish Governor Cuomo would do something about Medicaid.
He says he wants New York to be attractive for businesses. Consider
this: For fiscal year 2012 California had roughly twice the population of New York but spent only 94% of what we spend on Medicaid (even with that California is a
financial mess). Texas has roughly 30% more people than New York but
only spends 53% of what we spend on Medicaid.Florida has roughly the same population as New York but only
spends 34% of what we spend on Medicaid. Someone is going to have to
explain to us how New York is going to be attractive to businesses when
it is spending more than $1 billion a week on Medicaid. Our guess is
that we will be very attractive to new Medicaid recipients rather than
businesses.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
All forms of government have spent recklessly and resultantly
jeopardized the future of this great land. For example, let's take the
National Debt. The general public has absolutely no perception of what
$17,000,000,000,000+ represents. No one makes calculators with that many
zeros so let's see what $17 Trillion Dollars will buy. If the average
price of a home in the U.S, is $166,000 it would buy a home for roughly
95 million Americans without a mortgage! It would also send every person
18 and under to say Princeton for four years! There are appriximately
330 million residents of the U.S. counting all men, women and children.
That is roughly $55,000 for every American. I wonder what the economy
would look like if that $50,000 was spent by every American instead of a
bunch of wasteful bureaucrats. From 1945-1980 the National Debt went
from 120% of GDP (because of WWII) to 30% of GDP in 1980. Since 1980 to
present we are now at more than 100% of GDP.

Now let's talk about classic lack of discipline at the
federal level. Of the above $17 trillion+ in debt about $4.1 trillion is
owed to various government trust funds of which approximately $2.6
trillion is Social Security. Last time I knew trust fund meant trust
fund. So let's get this straight, Congress taxed you the $4.1 trillion
that was supposed to be in the trust funds and then voted to take the
money out of the trust fund and spend it elsewhere putting in an IOU.
Congress thinks the American people are totally stupid which is the only
way you could get away with this . For you see that even though you
already paid in the $4.1 trillion via being taxed , the only way you can
pay the $4.1 trillion back is to tax you the $4.1 trillion again so
they can put it back. In my opinion every legislator, regardless of
party, who voted to raid the Social Security Trust Fund because they
just could not get spending under control somewhere else should be
summarily thrown out of office at the next election on that vote alone.
That would be a good first step in fixing the problem. Social Security
would not nearly be the problem it is if this had been in fact treated
as a trust fund. Why no one is talking about this is totally beyond me.